


comes with such a cost

by biblionerd07



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hallucinations, Multi, Pining, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 22:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11472804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: Doc wasn't alone at the bottom of the well. Not completely.





	comes with such a cost

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, hello, I watched all of Wynonna Earp in two days and now I'm obsessed with Wyndolliday. I'm sorry for the impending fic spam that is going to come from me.

The thing about spending 130 years alone at the bottom of a well is this: he ran out of things to think about. Not much new was going on, after all, and there’s only so much self-loathing one man can do, even if he did have an awful lot of self-loathing to get up to.

But here’s another thing: when he ran out of things to think about, the hallucinations started. _Hallucinations_ makes it sound like Doc had a lot of them. In reality, there was one hallucination. He just brought different scenarios with him.

It was Wyatt. Of course it was Wyatt. Doc took a deal to live longer, kick the rattle in his chest and the blood in his cough, because Wyatt needed him. And he needed Wyatt. Doc had figured out the living business. Dying was unknown and unsavory, especially without Wyatt by his side to help him figure it all out.

So the hallucination.

The first time it happened, Doc was convinced it was real. It had to be. Wyatt was angry about the deal, angrier than Doc had seen even in the wake of his family being mowed down and the law letting the men responsible go free, but he was still Wyatt. He’d come for Doc.

“Doc,” he’d said, stretching out a hand. “Come on, Doc,” he’d said. “We got work yet to do.”

Doc had taken his hand and felt Wyatt lifting him up. “Wyatt,” Doc had breathed. “How did you find me?”

“I can always find you,” Wyatt had promised. It was the truth; in all their years together, they had an impeccable ability to meet up again after being separated. In the desert or the forest, in the cities or in the middle of a fight—they came back together like magnets.

Wyatt’s hand had all the callouses in the right places. Doc knew them all by heart. It wasn’t as if they’d sat around holding hands, but a man came to know the hands of his best friend, especially after all they’d been through together. Wyatt’s hand on his arm, steadying him after too much booze or taking a bullet. Wyatt’s hand clasped in his, helping one of them off the ground after a barroom brawl. Wyatt’s hand on his face, checking for damage or blood. Wyatt’s fingers brushing his as they passed a bottle or a cigarette.

Wyatt’s hand on other, usually-clothed parts of his person. They never spoke of it, never spoke _during_ it, but it wasn’t rare. They rode together for many years, alone under a blanket of stars and sharing a bedroll for warmth. Doc knows people here and now think his time was backward, with hatred for any differences, but it wasn’t exactly like that. If the nature of their intimacies had been public knowledge, it may not have gone over well, true. But they got by on the fact that people didn’t talk of such things then. The previous and beloved president of the United States had his close male companions; no one was blinking at two gun-slinging lawmen holing up together to survive the cold desert nights.

But anyhow. Doc knew the feel of Wyatt’s hand. He recognized it in that hole; he thinks he’d still know it now, century between them be damned. He’d held tight to that familiar hand and wept actual tears, because it had been so long. So long alone or so long without Wyatt, he isn’t sure even now. At some point in their time together, _alone_ and _without Wyatt_ had become almost synonyms. He’d find others to tide him over while they were apart, but it was Wyatt he went back to.

Wyatt had pulled him close and buried his face in Doc’s hair. Doc was willing to sacrifice his hat for this endeavor. “Come on, Doc,” Wyatt had whispered in his ear. “Come with me now.”

Doc had tried. He tried to climb, tried to cling to Wyatt. But Wyatt wasn’t solid, and then Doc remembered it was too dark to see even his own hand, let alone to make out the features his eyes rested most easy on, and then the hallucination collapsed. How Doc had screamed, realizing it was an illusion. How he had begged for death.

He was usually sure of the hallucinations after that. Never let it be said Doc Holliday is anything but a quick study. But being alone in the dark all that time made him welcome the hallucinations. At least in his mind, Wyatt still cared for him. At least in that well, Wyatt was there. He couldn’t tell the pass of time, but he came to know, at some point, Wyatt was dead. He wasn’t the type to think it was any sort of connection they had that told him. It was simply logic.

He hallucinated reunions. He hallucinated dying and meeting Wyatt outside heaven. That one never went far enough to see them inside the pearly gates. He hallucinated filthy scenarios that would help keep them out.

The whole climb out of the well, he knew it was an Earp around him. He also knew it wasn’t the Earp he wanted, and he didn’t want to see any Earp but his own. The thing about hallucinations, though: they never fully go away.

It was Wyatt who sent him to Wynonna, to protect those girls. It was Wyatt he felt when he kissed that girl’s lips the first time. She’s too soft to be Wyatt, outside and in, but she has a kernel of him in there. She’s different enough that Doc thinks he’s moving on. Doc tells himself it’s good to do this, good to leave a ghost behind.

“Then I threw you down a well, so that if even if Wyatt softened, came looking for you…” Constance Clootie is not trustworthy. Doc would do well to remember that. Still, he can’t help the tight clutch around his chest at her words.

“Did he?” He asks against his will, voice breaking and hand going to his hat. A gift from Wyatt, of course.

The witch never answers him. She has to know it’s far crueler than either answer would have been. He imagines Wyatt searching for him, asking for him, determining Doc had abandoned him.

He imagines Wyatt kicking dirt on his empty grave and saying _good riddance_.

“I looked,” Wyatt promises one day.

“Of course I didn’t,” Wyatt spits the next.

_Crazy_ is a term people in this time throw out a lot, and Doc knows by any conventional standard that word applies to him. He talks to a man long dead; he sees him in empty rooms and drinks with him at night. He is comfortable in this derangement. He clings to his ghost and shuns the Earp he doesn’t want. The Earp who doesn’t want him.

_How many Earps can you disappoint in one life_? Well, maybe no Earp wanted him. At least his hallucination does.

Wynonna, of course, uses the kernel of Wyatt in her to be a blundering fool. Doc isn’t sure why he expected anything less from an Earp.

“So,” she says one day. “Sounds like you and Wyatt were pretty tight. Ever knock boots with ol’ Grandpappy?” She wiggles her eyebrows. Doc feels himself bruise at this crudeness. To her, Wyatt is a name, a legend, a burden. He isn’t a real person. Not that Wynonna is one to take these matters seriously, even for real people.

“Do not,” Doc says, hearing the hardness in his voice giving him away, “make a mockery of his name.”

He can see surprise on her face. “Whoa. Shit just got real.”

Doc runs a finger over the brim of his hat comfortingly. He had exulted over that hat when Wyatt gave it to him. Gifts other than a bottle of whiskey were few and far between, because they carried little by way of material possessions. They went from town to town on horseback, so there wasn’t room for much. Wyatt had smiled broadly at him, a smile that had steadily disappeared since brother after brother and cousin after cousin met an unhappy end.

“I guess that explains this,” Wynonna presses on, waving a hand between them.

“Nothing to explain,” Doc mutters, leaving before she can press. She was the one who said that first, wasn't she? That they were not an _us_.

Doc knows the stages of caring for an Earp. Not taking jokes well is a deeper stage than he appreciates finding himself in with Wynonna. He talks it over with Wyatt and a bottle of whiskey. Some things never change.

“There are worse things in the world than loving,” Wyatt tells him, the two of them hiding out in the barn months after Doc’s decided he’s best off leaving Wynonna to Wynonna.

Doc shakes his head, looking Wyatt over. “In my experience, loving often leads to those worse things.”

“Doc,” Wyatt scolds. “It was dying led you there.”

“It was you,” Doc says softly. “Couldn’t leave you.”

“Never asked you for that,” Wyatt says. “Never wanted that for you.”

“I know.” Doc takes another pull from the bottle. One thing he likes about a hallucinated Wyatt is he never has to share the drink.

“You shouldn’t leave her, either,” Wyatt says. He was always so duty-bound. Doc hated it sometimes.

“She has the Deputy Marshall,” Doc tells him bitterly, thinking of their lips pressed together, both looking so impressive all dressed to the nines, thinking of her hand brushing against his fevered brow after they found him, after Doc went to such lengths to help him.

“And you don’t?” Wyatt asks. Doc flushes a little. One thing he _hates_ about a hallucinated Wyatt is he never has to share his _thoughts_. Wyatt already knows them.

Though he supposes that isn’t really so different from the real Wyatt.

“The Deputy Marshall is not so inclined,” Doc says stiffly.

Wyatt looks unimpressed. “From what I’ve seen, he might be. Thinkin’ you’re too yellow to try it out.”

Doc laughs bitterly. “You can call me yellow all you want. I can’t kill you.”

“You wouldn’t if you could,” Wyatt says. Doc doesn’t bother responding. It’s the truth and they both know it. Obviously they both know it—Wyatt is really just Doc, so he knows whatever Doc knows. “Maybe I’m not,” Wyatt says. “Maybe I’m a ghost.”

“And just how would you end up a ghost?” Doc asks. “Only if that were part of your curse. You wouldn’t stick around on this earthly plane with all your kin dead and waiting.”

Wyatt looks at him steadily. “Not all.” He isn’t talking about Wynonna and Waverly. Doc swallows.

“Well. Be that as it may, I do not believe you’re a ghost. You came to me long before Wyatt was dead.”

“And you know that how?” Wyatt asks. “You were at the bottom of a well.”

“I do recall, thank you.”

“Maybe I died right after the witch threw you down. Maybe I died trying to find you and then went right on looking.”

Wyatt kicks back on the hay bale he’s lounging on and crosses his feet at the ankle. It used to drive Doc half-mad when he did that, legs so long and lean, spread out for miles. Wyatt smiles at him lazily.

“I remember,” he says, answering Doc’s thoughts again.

“Will you stop?” Doc asks. “You are certainly not making anything easier on me.”

“And since when is that my job?” Wyatt asks.

“Thought it was since we took up together.” Doc takes another pull from the bottle. “But I have been known to be mistaken before.”

Wyatt just looks at him until Doc meets his eyes. “Can’t you see that’s what I’m trying to do?” Wyatt asks quietly. “I don’t want you immortal, Doc, I want you with me. But there ain’t nothing I can do about that from here. So if you’re there, and you’re alive, and I’m here, and I’m dead, I do not want you to be alone.”

“Not alone,” Doc points out, gesturing to Wyatt. Wyatt rolls his eyes. He does look like Wynonna when he does that. Or she looks like him, rather. He did come first.

“I want something more for you than a bottle and a ghost. You got people caring for you, people who are flesh and blood.”

“One of those is not so much _people_ as you might expect,” Doc mutters. Wyatt ignores him. He was always pretty good at that when he wanted to be.

“Why’d you bother climbing out that well if you are gonna keep living alone in the dark?”

“Why, Wyatt Earp, that almost sounds like you’re philosophizing.”

“Being dead makes you mighty wise.” Wyatt smiles at him. It’s a soft smile Doc didn’t see often—usually in stolen moments alone, just as the sun was rising. “Go on, Doc. Saddle up and ride again. If you can learn to drive a car, I expect you can learn to love again.”

“You know I don’t care for sentiment.”

Wyatt snorts. “I know you do and pretend you don’t.”

That’s not something Doc can argue against. He’d kept the damn hat for over a century, after all. He’d cried a little after he lost it. The new one looks the same, but it isn’t the same.

“Will you leave?” He asks. His voice is small. He doesn’t mind Wyatt hearing him like this, because it’s Wyatt. “If I do…” He shrugs. “Will you go away?”

Wyatt gives him that soft smile again. “And just where the hell would I go without you, John Henry? Last time I left without you we both ended up cursed. I do not plan to make the same mistake twice.”

“You won’t watch, will you?” Doc checks, just to be ornery now that happiness is spreading through him. “That is your progeny, after all.”

Wyatt makes a face. “No need to be crude, Doc.”

It makes Doc laugh. Wyatt used to say that a lot. He was always so prim and proper with other people around, but Doc knew better.

“There is a chance I may watch you with the Deputy Marshall,” Wyatt admits. He shrugs a little sheepishly when Doc raises his eyebrows. “You know how I appreciate a man who knows his way around a gun.”

Doc throws his head back and laughs. “I do know that. Long as you remember which man who knows his way around a gun you like best.”

“I only take up with the best,” Wyatt reminds him. “Don’t let yourself get rusty and we’ll be just fine.”

Doc snorts. “You can be quite an ass.”

“Learned it from you.”

“Doc?”

Doc whirls around, gun already drawn, to see Dolls in the doorway. Doc can’t believe he didn’t hear him drive up in that beast of a car. Maybe he fell asleep and was dreaming Wyatt instead of hallucinating this time.

“You think you could shoot me before I breathe fire on you?” Dolls asks, smirking a little. Doc rolls his eyes and lowers his gun.

“I expect so,” he says. “My gun requires just the pull of my legendary finger. You have to get all worked up to get to the fire.”

Dolls shrugs. “Guess I’ll work on it. Who were you talking to?”

Doc looks over to the hay bale, but Wyatt’s gone. “Myself,” Doc says. He sees the way Dolls raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “I grew accustomed to my own company. No one else to talk to all those years in the well,” he reminds Dolls. Dolls’ face pinches when Doc mentions the well. It’s happened before. Doc thinks of what Wyatt said about Dolls being so inclined and adds that to the tally in his head.

“But you’re not there anymore,” Dolls reminds him. Doc glances toward the house, where Wynonna’s inside, probably drinking away the image of Waverly possessed. He looks at Dolls, whose eyes are showing something almost as scary as the reptile look but so much softer. He thinks of Waverly hand-in-hand with her girl, smiling and unashamed. Doc puts down the bottle and gets to his feet.

“No,” Doc agrees. “I am surely not.”

He claps a hand on Dolls’ shoulder, and they walk to the house together.


End file.
